Get cozy and maybe find yourself a nice drink, this one is going to take a while...
So we're kicking things off with one of the games for which I titled the thread, and a game I've been real excited to play since it got a Steam release several years ago; Wildermyth! And I am not sure if that's supposed to be pronounced like "Wilderness but mythical" or like "A myth that is wilder than usual". Both apply equally to the game, and all I can do is pray that nobody asks me what I'm playing.
Same issue I had with VVVVVV.
Anyhow, this here is an SRPG, but, more importantly, it's an SRPG with a truly, unbelievably ludicrously huge number of branching paths and randomized event flags and multiple generations of adventurers, so, buddy... there's a boatload of video game here.
Hmm... there's three other games I could segue to based on that previous sentence. Let's make this a Choose Your Own Adventure. If you want me to say "Speaking of games with a ludicrously huge number of branching paths" turn to the next paragraph, If you want me to say "Speaking of multiple generations of RPG peeps" turn to the next blurb below that, and if you want my segue to be "speaking of things loaded on to a boat" turn to the blurb after that. If you want to enter the Vampires Lair, go straight to the end of the post.
Speaking of games with a ludicrously huge number of branching paths, next is Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut! Another game I was really interested in playing since hearing about it on Steam a year or more ago! This one is more of a regular ass Choosey-Style Adventure game, where you're a knight who is *pretty sure* you've got to go into a princesses weird forest cottage and kill her up real good. But the Princess within aforesaid cottage offers a second opinion on the matter. And... it's just a voice in your head telling you that you "absolutely" should kill this princess. And the princess is equally sure it's not in your best interests.
So... anyway... you're going to have a real bad time since you decided that a princess needs slaying,
Speaking of Multiple Generations of RPG Peeps, next up is Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, the second remake of the Super Famicom RPG of the same name. But this time brought up to Modern RPG aesthetic standards rather than being a tweaked port of the original. You're the scion of a long lasting RPG kingdom who... kind of lost your job after the seven legendary heroes who once saved the world from an unfathomable evil came back and booted you out of your fancy throne and also turned out to be evil themselves. So now you have to forge your own vast empire and defeat the former heroes turned demonic invaders... and assuredly die before you get close to that so just foist that job on to your kids, and then their kids.
Speaking of things loaded on to a boat, that is the absolute last thing you want to happen to Adol Cristin. And yet, here is Ys X: Nordics, where the boat-wreckin'est man in RPGs is given command of a ship and a new, unexplored part of the Ys world (the ocean, this time) and *safe to assume* general Ys chicanery ensues.
Which is to say Adol is going to kill whatever poses for satan around these parts and makes every woman in his general vicinity fall in love with him even though he basically only communicates through the process of hacking monsters to pieces. And he's probably going to wreck a bunch of boats regardless.
Now it is, of course, Late October; Where there's twenty four Witching Hours every day. And so it's only proper, and respectful, to honor our hard working local witches by releasing a video game about the most important part of their culture; making potions and brews. And, more importantly, about the economics about potions. Potionomics, if you will.
And I insist you do, because that is what the video game is called.
This here is a Farm Man Star Game where you're a witch, you have to run a Witches Hut (similar to a pizza hut, but with eyes of newt) and keep your customers happy. And also date them because... y'know... that's usually the way games like this work.
It also has that art style that leaves me a bit surprised I haven't seen more behornt fanart of the characters. Not that I was seeking it, just surprised that it hasn't appeared before me unbidden.
Speaking of starting a small business and seeing it take off beyond your wildest fantasies; organized crime is one example of that. And that brings us, surprisingly late in the game, to Yakuza: Kiwami, which got a Switch port, like... seven years after it came out on everything else. It's a remake of the first Yakuza, starring everyones favorite mob enforcer with a heart of gold (and fists of steel) Kiryu as he gets out of jail and decides to immediately resume his personal passion; beating rival Yakuza clans inside out, but also getting way too invested in a outrageous number of side-quests and being hassled by a weirdo with an eyepatch.
Speaking of surprisingly long waits for beloved Sega re-releases, we finally got one for Sonic Generations. But that's not all because Sonic x Shadow: Generations also offers a whole dang extra game starring the Bad, Keanu Reeves Sonic, Shadow the Hedgehog. It's like how Mario 3D world also got Bowserrs Fury slapped into it, but it's all about Accelerated Varmints this time!
Generations was already considered to be one of the best games in the series, so adding a bunch of Other New Stuff into it surely don't hurt! Unless it's a terrible port, I guess. That happens with Sonic games a lot...
Also, probably the least effective way to title a game in terms of SEO
Speaking of loving tributes to beloved 2D games, we have Card en Ciel, Inticreates' latest game. And, as is the Inticreates bread and butter, they're taking an existing beloved game and just... doing that again. In this case, it's Mega Man Battle Network but with all the references replaced by other Inicreates games! Or at least other Inticreates games that they don't have to worry about the copyright of; so lots of Gunvolt and Umbraclaw and Galgun characters, maybe not so much Mega Man and Blaster Master.
There's a demo, and I tried the demo, and I said "Oh, this is VERY good!" so it's got a ringing Octo-Endorsement, but also there's a bucketload of other games out this week that got a similar endorsement, so it's not a total gimme.
Explore scenic "Pretending to play a video game" and get stymied because characters from the wrong video game are in it" then beat the crap out of them using trading cards depicting characters from yet a third video game. It's the most video game you can possibly be playing!
Next up is another game I didn't know existed two weeks ago, then it jumped right up to the top of my "Oh boy oh boy" list; Rogue Flight. Which, despite the title, and the presence of airplanes shooting BAD PLANES, has nothing to do with Sky Rogue. No shade if it did, I loved Sky Rogue, but this ain't that. What it AM, however, is a dang ol' tube-flyin', path-branchin', barrel rollin', einsteining Star Fox-em-up.
With, yes, an optional Roguelite mode.
It's the year "A Little After Skynet" and there's, like, one functional aircraft left NOT under the command of a genocidal AI, so it's up to you and a bunch of people chattering at you over the radio to explode the crap out of the murder-computer what killed everything. A sizable chunk of the eShop description is bragging about the breadth of the IMDB pages of the voice cast.
Speaking of everything being dead already, we have Soul Stalker, which describes itse;f as a "bullet heaven shooter", which I *think* means it's a Vampire Survivors game? But it's a Vampire Survivors game where everything looks kind of like Paper Mario in a haunted house.
I don't know much, but I DO know that I like the visuals.
Speaking of things that look passably similar to things I already know I enjoy we have Voidwrought, which looks a lot like Hollow Knight. And I've given up on Silksong coming out any time soon, so... any port in a storm, y'know? And it looks pretty spiffy.
Visit scenic "A Nasty Cthulhu Fortress" with your new best friend "A cloak guy with a weird arm" and chop the bajeezus out of everything down that that looks to be partially inside out or with its teeth in weird spots.
What if "looking very similar to a game from 2019" is entirely too recent for you. What fi you want to play a game that looks very much like it came out in the late 80s on a popular 8-bit video game console. Why such a thing would require a time warp, wouldn't it? Well, good news, you don't have to do a time warp again, because The Rocky Horror Picture Show Video Game secretly came out yesterday! It kind of looks like a Mario 2, except with WAY more Tim Curry in drag.
The eShop description has a lot of references to the movie, but I've never seen it so I can't be certain of that.
Speaking of fake NES games we also have Ghost Mini which is NOT a seasonal tale of spooks and spirits designed to chill your spine, but an 8-bit demake of Ghost 1.0, the pretty good troid-em-up starring a robot girl. This one looks more like, say, an SMS or TG-16 game than NES. Kind of got some Zillion vibes from it.
And speaking of REAL old video games, this weeks Egg Console re-release is Murder Club, a club where you solve murders. Or possibly commit them? It's hard to tell as the game is a text adventure presented entirely in Japanese so I got no idea whether you are pro or con when it comes to intentionally stopping peoples bodies from working.
And finally, we have another NSO update, on the ol' N64 this time; Banjo Tooie, which was the sequel to Banjo Kazooie. The *other* collect-a-thon N64 Platformer that everyone loved. Tooie I don't see get as much praise heaped upon it, but I haven't played either so I can't say why that is.
I'm pretty sure it's got some racism that the first one didn't have since there was a weirdly high amount of that in later N64 games.
You knock on the Vampire Kings front door, but there's no answer. And you're not allowed in a vampires home unless you're invited; THAT RULE WORKS BOTH WAYS.
So we're kicking things off with one of the games for which I titled the thread, and a game I've been real excited to play since it got a Steam release several years ago; Wildermyth! And I am not sure if that's supposed to be pronounced like "Wilderness but mythical" or like "A myth that is wilder than usual". Both apply equally to the game, and all I can do is pray that nobody asks me what I'm playing.
Same issue I had with VVVVVV.
Anyhow, this here is an SRPG, but, more importantly, it's an SRPG with a truly, unbelievably ludicrously huge number of branching paths and randomized event flags and multiple generations of adventurers, so, buddy... there's a boatload of video game here.
Hmm... there's three other games I could segue to based on that previous sentence. Let's make this a Choose Your Own Adventure. If you want me to say "Speaking of games with a ludicrously huge number of branching paths" turn to the next paragraph, If you want me to say "Speaking of multiple generations of RPG peeps" turn to the next blurb below that, and if you want my segue to be "speaking of things loaded on to a boat" turn to the blurb after that. If you want to enter the Vampires Lair, go straight to the end of the post.
Speaking of games with a ludicrously huge number of branching paths, next is Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut! Another game I was really interested in playing since hearing about it on Steam a year or more ago! This one is more of a regular ass Choosey-Style Adventure game, where you're a knight who is *pretty sure* you've got to go into a princesses weird forest cottage and kill her up real good. But the Princess within aforesaid cottage offers a second opinion on the matter. And... it's just a voice in your head telling you that you "absolutely" should kill this princess. And the princess is equally sure it's not in your best interests.
So... anyway... you're going to have a real bad time since you decided that a princess needs slaying,
Speaking of Multiple Generations of RPG Peeps, next up is Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, the second remake of the Super Famicom RPG of the same name. But this time brought up to Modern RPG aesthetic standards rather than being a tweaked port of the original. You're the scion of a long lasting RPG kingdom who... kind of lost your job after the seven legendary heroes who once saved the world from an unfathomable evil came back and booted you out of your fancy throne and also turned out to be evil themselves. So now you have to forge your own vast empire and defeat the former heroes turned demonic invaders... and assuredly die before you get close to that so just foist that job on to your kids, and then their kids.
Speaking of things loaded on to a boat, that is the absolute last thing you want to happen to Adol Cristin. And yet, here is Ys X: Nordics, where the boat-wreckin'est man in RPGs is given command of a ship and a new, unexplored part of the Ys world (the ocean, this time) and *safe to assume* general Ys chicanery ensues.
Which is to say Adol is going to kill whatever poses for satan around these parts and makes every woman in his general vicinity fall in love with him even though he basically only communicates through the process of hacking monsters to pieces. And he's probably going to wreck a bunch of boats regardless.
Now it is, of course, Late October; Where there's twenty four Witching Hours every day. And so it's only proper, and respectful, to honor our hard working local witches by releasing a video game about the most important part of their culture; making potions and brews. And, more importantly, about the economics about potions. Potionomics, if you will.
And I insist you do, because that is what the video game is called.
This here is a Farm Man Star Game where you're a witch, you have to run a Witches Hut (similar to a pizza hut, but with eyes of newt) and keep your customers happy. And also date them because... y'know... that's usually the way games like this work.
It also has that art style that leaves me a bit surprised I haven't seen more behornt fanart of the characters. Not that I was seeking it, just surprised that it hasn't appeared before me unbidden.
Speaking of starting a small business and seeing it take off beyond your wildest fantasies; organized crime is one example of that. And that brings us, surprisingly late in the game, to Yakuza: Kiwami, which got a Switch port, like... seven years after it came out on everything else. It's a remake of the first Yakuza, starring everyones favorite mob enforcer with a heart of gold (and fists of steel) Kiryu as he gets out of jail and decides to immediately resume his personal passion; beating rival Yakuza clans inside out, but also getting way too invested in a outrageous number of side-quests and being hassled by a weirdo with an eyepatch.
Speaking of surprisingly long waits for beloved Sega re-releases, we finally got one for Sonic Generations. But that's not all because Sonic x Shadow: Generations also offers a whole dang extra game starring the Bad, Keanu Reeves Sonic, Shadow the Hedgehog. It's like how Mario 3D world also got Bowserrs Fury slapped into it, but it's all about Accelerated Varmints this time!
Generations was already considered to be one of the best games in the series, so adding a bunch of Other New Stuff into it surely don't hurt! Unless it's a terrible port, I guess. That happens with Sonic games a lot...
Also, probably the least effective way to title a game in terms of SEO
Speaking of loving tributes to beloved 2D games, we have Card en Ciel, Inticreates' latest game. And, as is the Inticreates bread and butter, they're taking an existing beloved game and just... doing that again. In this case, it's Mega Man Battle Network but with all the references replaced by other Inicreates games! Or at least other Inticreates games that they don't have to worry about the copyright of; so lots of Gunvolt and Umbraclaw and Galgun characters, maybe not so much Mega Man and Blaster Master.
There's a demo, and I tried the demo, and I said "Oh, this is VERY good!" so it's got a ringing Octo-Endorsement, but also there's a bucketload of other games out this week that got a similar endorsement, so it's not a total gimme.
Explore scenic "Pretending to play a video game" and get stymied because characters from the wrong video game are in it" then beat the crap out of them using trading cards depicting characters from yet a third video game. It's the most video game you can possibly be playing!
Next up is another game I didn't know existed two weeks ago, then it jumped right up to the top of my "Oh boy oh boy" list; Rogue Flight. Which, despite the title, and the presence of airplanes shooting BAD PLANES, has nothing to do with Sky Rogue. No shade if it did, I loved Sky Rogue, but this ain't that. What it AM, however, is a dang ol' tube-flyin', path-branchin', barrel rollin', einsteining Star Fox-em-up.
With, yes, an optional Roguelite mode.
It's the year "A Little After Skynet" and there's, like, one functional aircraft left NOT under the command of a genocidal AI, so it's up to you and a bunch of people chattering at you over the radio to explode the crap out of the murder-computer what killed everything. A sizable chunk of the eShop description is bragging about the breadth of the IMDB pages of the voice cast.
Speaking of everything being dead already, we have Soul Stalker, which describes itse;f as a "bullet heaven shooter", which I *think* means it's a Vampire Survivors game? But it's a Vampire Survivors game where everything looks kind of like Paper Mario in a haunted house.
I don't know much, but I DO know that I like the visuals.
Speaking of things that look passably similar to things I already know I enjoy we have Voidwrought, which looks a lot like Hollow Knight. And I've given up on Silksong coming out any time soon, so... any port in a storm, y'know? And it looks pretty spiffy.
Visit scenic "A Nasty Cthulhu Fortress" with your new best friend "A cloak guy with a weird arm" and chop the bajeezus out of everything down that that looks to be partially inside out or with its teeth in weird spots.
What if "looking very similar to a game from 2019" is entirely too recent for you. What fi you want to play a game that looks very much like it came out in the late 80s on a popular 8-bit video game console. Why such a thing would require a time warp, wouldn't it? Well, good news, you don't have to do a time warp again, because The Rocky Horror Picture Show Video Game secretly came out yesterday! It kind of looks like a Mario 2, except with WAY more Tim Curry in drag.
The eShop description has a lot of references to the movie, but I've never seen it so I can't be certain of that.
Speaking of fake NES games we also have Ghost Mini which is NOT a seasonal tale of spooks and spirits designed to chill your spine, but an 8-bit demake of Ghost 1.0, the pretty good troid-em-up starring a robot girl. This one looks more like, say, an SMS or TG-16 game than NES. Kind of got some Zillion vibes from it.
And speaking of REAL old video games, this weeks Egg Console re-release is Murder Club, a club where you solve murders. Or possibly commit them? It's hard to tell as the game is a text adventure presented entirely in Japanese so I got no idea whether you are pro or con when it comes to intentionally stopping peoples bodies from working.
And finally, we have another NSO update, on the ol' N64 this time; Banjo Tooie, which was the sequel to Banjo Kazooie. The *other* collect-a-thon N64 Platformer that everyone loved. Tooie I don't see get as much praise heaped upon it, but I haven't played either so I can't say why that is.
I'm pretty sure it's got some racism that the first one didn't have since there was a weirdly high amount of that in later N64 games.
You knock on the Vampire Kings front door, but there's no answer. And you're not allowed in a vampires home unless you're invited; THAT RULE WORKS BOTH WAYS.
